


tears or ocean spray, it's salt water all the same

by paaxanthus



Category: Half-Life, Hunt Down The Freeman (Video Game)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Canon, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:33:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25620637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paaxanthus/pseuds/paaxanthus
Summary: Mitch finally lets himself open up to someone, and starts the journey towards not hating himself for the entirety of the past four decades of his life.
Relationships: Mitchell Shephard & Adrian Shephard, Mitchell Shephard/Nick, past Mitchell Shephard/Nick/Adam
Kudos: 11





	tears or ocean spray, it's salt water all the same

Adam was dead.

Mitch knew this, knew it was reality. He had felt the blood seeping from Adam’s wounds, had pulled the trigger, had sent him lifelessly over the railing into the cold water below. For a moment, he felt vindicated. His decades-long hunt for the man who tried to murder him was over, done. It quickly dissolved into a pit of ugly, pervasive _guilt_ as he saw Nick’s face. Saw and heard the way Nick coldly addressed him by title alone, avoided looking at his face. 

Mitch didn’t cry. Hadn’t since he was young. He had learned early in life that being loud and vulnerable in emotion was his best way to attract unwanted attention. Sometimes he would realize after a breakdown, locked in a bathroom or his truck or anywhere he could hide for a moment’s privacy, that his face was stained with drying streaks of tears, but that wasn’t the same as the sobbing he had learned so young to avoid. It was quiet, restrained.

Mitch _didn’t_ cry, didn’t let himself. So why was he here, _utterly alone_ in his quarters, letting his body be wracked by sobs? He still forced himself to suppress the wailing. His men couldn’t know. They couldn’t know that, deep down, Mitchell Shephard was still no different from the boy who had resolved in his teens to drink himself to death. Couldn’t know that he felt hurt, same as anyone else.

Nick knew, from what precious little that Mitch had let be known of himself those past two decades. He knew the weight of _everything_ was eating away at Mitch. He didn’t know _why_ Mitch so adamantly _refused_ to let himself be known, but he knew without it being said that Mitch had baggage. You didn’t so stubbornly refuse to let yourself be known, even after _twenty years_ , if there wasn’t any baggage. He knew that Mitch’s insistence that everything was okay was a lie, it was just one that Mitch was desperate to accept as the truth. Nick left him alone, for the most part. He needed his own space to grieve.

Mitch knew his inability - _no_ , his refusal - to allow himself emotional vulnerability stemmed from his childhood. He had always felt a need to be tough, to be a good, protective older brother. He had placed a lot of his value as a person on his need to keep Adrian safe. He didn’t believe there was anything else he was good for. Tell someone something enough, they’ll internalize it, and that was what he had done with the assertions he was worthless. 

Distancing himself emotionally was the only defense mechanism he knew. His superiors, back when there were superiors, would’ve commended him for it. He _despised_ that. Some small, still-hopeful part of him _wanted_ to let people in, to truly allow himself to be vulnerable. To be known. The rest of him was firm in the belief that’d just get him hurt again. And that part was right. He had let himself start to open up to Nick and Adam, look at how well _that_ had gone, he told himself. One hated him. The other was a corpse in the ocean.

The state he was in, this crying _mess_ he had somehow allowed himself to become, reminded him of Adrian when they were young. The kid had _always_ worn his heart on his sleeve, hadn’t developed the same desire Mitch had to keep everything he felt a secret. When he smiled, it was the kind of smile that filled others with joy, wide and goofy and positively _beaming_. When he cried, it was heart-wrenching sobs that shook the entirety of his slight frame. 

Was Adrian even out there still? Mitch didn’t know. He hadn’t seen his brother in… he wasn’t sure of the exact timeline. Thirty years? His late teens and early twenties had been a haze as he tried to drown the memory of the night their mother died in whatever cheap booze he could get his hands on. He sometimes wondered what had kept him from joining her. 

He couldn’t decide if it was better or worse if Adrian was still out there somewhere. On one hand, he could see him again. Surely, with his soft spot for animals and their mutual, escapist love of sci-fi, Adrian would’ve _loved_ to get his hands on any of the alien wildlife that could be considered possible to domesticate. On the other, this world was far too harsh and unforgiving for the scrawny pre-teen that he had helplessly watched be torn away from him. Even without that, could he face his baby brother again? After all the horrible, fucked up things he had done? The lives he had sacrificed to selfishly prolong his own? 

No, he told himself. Adrian would see the monster he had become and would mourn the loss of his older brother.

Months passed. Nick avoided Mitch less and less. He had grieved, had given himself time, had realized that _somehow_ , Mitch hadn’t wanted this. Despite everything inside _screaming_ at him that this was just how he continued to get hurt, Mitch slowly let himself open up to Nick. About everything. He spoke of life before the Seven Hour War, of what had driven him since, of the mountain of guilt that crushed him. And Nick listened.

There was a rift after Adam’s death, between Nick distancing himself to grieve and out of fear and Mitch shutting down to wallow in his own self-pity. Despite that, Mitch insisted to himself, despite this and not regardless of it? Nick is kind, understanding. 

It’s… a process, it has to be. But Nick had been reaching out his hand for years, and Mitch had finally begun to reach back. 

The number of nights spent hidden away in their own quarters, alone, numbed by the grief, slowly but steadily dropped as they began to let themselves trust each other again. For the first time in a long time, the Avalon Vale was peaceful.

**Author's Note:**

> went on a tangent this morning in the hdtf discord about mitch and decided to refine it into a fic. take a fucking sip, babes. y'all know who you are. <3


End file.
